The Vikings first settled in Greenland around the year 1000, but now these once free people have given up their freedom to serve a greedy bishop and his English cohorts, who see the opportunity to profit from the booming North Atlantic cod fish trade. When the bishop announces that the colony will relocate to Newfoundland, seventeen-year old Bridget Thorsdottir, who lives in the remotest part of the colony at Dyrnes, believes she and her family must flee Greenland . Bridget’s father, Thor, will not listen to her and refuses to abandon the land left to him by his Viking ancestors. Driven by nightmares of the encroaching ice, Bridget runs away with her step-brother Bjorn, hoping to find a new home and return at the end of summer. But when Bridget seeks help from her mother’s people, the nomadic Inuit living to the north, events at home force her back to the colony to confront the bishop and save her family.